On the 19th of April it was progress day where we showed back to our class members some aspects of our installation. This was very beneficial for our group as because it is down to the audience’s participation we needed to test out our ideas so far.
We tried out three different sections from our final installation, including how music will affect your mood, plate smashing and also paint balloon popping. What we aimed to achieve this day, was to see how well these experiments would work and to see how the audience came about them.
The music experiment insisted of sensory deprivation from one of our fellow audience members. We placed a blindfold over their eyes and tied their hands up behind their back and put on the headphones. Before we did this, we asked the individual what mood they were currently feeling. We then tried to contrast their mood with the song we chose for them. This was to see if and how music changes your mood. Simultaneously, with this exercise one of my group member’s span and pushed the audience member around the room. This was to bombard them will emotions and feelings to see what the outcome would be to their mood. Afterwards, we gathered information from the audience and also asked them to Tweet their own responses.
Then we took our audience members outside to smash crockery, and pop balloons to see what affect these also had on their mood or if it stayed the same. We again asked for people to leave responses on Twitter.
This day was extremely beneficial for us as a group as it helped us realise what worked and what needs more work on and what did not work at all. We concluded that the music experiment would work better if we didn’t have them on a chair and they stayed still so they can just focus purely on the music they can hear and forget everything else around them. The class gave us feedback saying that this part was the weakest experiment out of all three. Which personally, I agree with as it seemed the most messiest due to it being the first time we tried to sensually deprive someone whilst then spinning them and choosing the song. Without this trail day, we probably wouldn’t have realised how unpolished this would look because thinking it seems easy, but we needed to dedicate roles specifically.